Vancouver play review

Delusion by Laurie Anderson
with  Eyvund Kang (viola) and Colin Stetson (horns)
Commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and BARBICANBITE10
Vancouver Playhouse
Feb 17 to  21st,  2010.

Vancouver, BC:  Yesterday I found myself on the opposite side of an interview - interviewee rather than interviewer. I was checking in for my last shift in the Main Press Centre and unbeknownst  to me, lurking around the check-in desk was one of the volunteers who write the daily Volunteer Newsletter. On hearing that this was the last of my 15 shifts he begged, pleaded and cajoled (alright I exaggerate) until I agreed to have a picture taken for the newsletter. 

While I was chatting away a mile a minute about the Cultural Olympiad among other things - the caffeine from my early  morning coffee was obviously still racing around my system - he asked what I had most enjoyed about the Cultural Olympiad. I began to rattle off memorable aspects from several of the shows I had seen and then when my brain finally caught up to my mouth I stopped and thought about it.

The MicroTheatre Series :
At The Cultch (1895 Venables)
1 to 6 Feb, 2010

1) Etiquette - A Rotozaza production (UK)
2) You & The Moon - The Only Animal (Vancouver, BC)
I3) Intimate History - An Untied Artists production (UK)

Vancouver, BC:  Three cheers for the new Wine Bar  at The Cultch. The Olympic road-closures are at the stage where part of Pacific Boulevard and both the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts are closed to traffic so to get from my place anywhere involves ferreting out new routes.  To make sure we were in time for our Micro-Theatre adventure, we set off early along the E. Hastings route to Commercial. Although until just beyond Main Street traffic moved at a snail's pace, after that the pace picked up and we were actually at The Cultch with a good half an hour to spare after collecting our tickets. So we settled down comfortably in the Wine Bar to enjoy a glass of wine while we waited to be called for our show.

Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
A new version by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Victor Vasuta
United Players of Vancouver
Jericho Arts Centre
Jan 22 to Feb 14, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I really enjoyed United Player's production of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, although I did find myself wanting to hand Nickolay Ivanov a strong dose of some psychotropic  medication and a referral to a psychotherapist. But that's the infuriatingly hapless self-absorbed character that Chekhov created.

In the title role, Noel Johansen showed us a  man who has lost his way in every aspect of his world - his marriage, his work and his finances. Married to the ailing Anna (Tamara McCarthy), whose wealthy parents disowned her when she converted from Judaism to marry him, Ivanov has "fallen out of  love"  with Anna. He leaves her at home each evening while he goes to  visit the  Lebedevs,  the affable Pavel (Dave Campbell) and his  wife Zinaida (Christine Ianetta). Zinaida is a wealthy moneylender to whom Ivanov is severely in debt. And then there is Sasha.

Best Before
by Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug  & Stefan Kaegil)
The Cultch, PuSh Festival and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
The Cultch
Jan 29 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  As a computer-nerd/technophile of long-standing I was intrigued by the concept of taking the multi-player video game concept into the theatre and eagerly anticipated the experience of my personal avatar interacting with some 200 other avatars to conjure up  a new society in BestLand.

Best Before, an innovative  audience interactive production was developed for the PuSh Festival by Helgard Haug  & Stefan Kaegil of Rimini Protokoll, an  experimental theatre company based in Germany, working with local playwright/dramaturg, Tim Carlson.  Rimini Protokoll create  novel forms of "reality" theatre, casting non-professional actors for their "theatre of experts" projects  and often employing technology as a form of equal partner in the work.  For example for  Best before, as well as the usual team of set, video, sound and light designers, the "backstage" or "offline" development team included a computer game designer, character animator, and programmer

Nevermore - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
Writer, Composer, Director  Jonathan Christenson
Production Designer Bretta Gerecke
Choreographer Laura Krewski
Sound Designer Wade  Staples
A Catalyst Theatre production presented with the:-
Arts Club Theatre Company, Cultch, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival,  Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
Arts Club Granville Island Stage
Jan 21 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  Wow, they just keep coming. One stunning show after another. I just love the cornucopia of art that is spilling out all over my beloved  city of Vancouver during the Cultural Olympiad. Nevermore is  another superb production not to be missed. The visual aspects  are  spectacular, the music haunting and the effect is strangely disturbing and other-worldly.

As you take your seat, you see a  bank of panels on an otherwise bare stage and think minimalism and simplicity. But these panels will confound your imagination and be transformed by brilliant lighting into transparent moving screens behind and through which strange characters move.  Clad in strikingly geometric and oddly shaped black and white costumes, coloured by red, blue and purple lights, these characters inhabit two bizarre worlds, the imagined "real" world of Edgar Allan  Poe's bitter life and those equally dark and bitter worlds created in his stories and poems.

The Show Must Go On
by Jérôme Bel

SFU Woodwards and The Dance Centre
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU
Jan 20 to 23rd, 2010

I was especially looking forward to going to see this show  because I anticipated that for several reasons it would be a bit of an adventure . Firstly this would be the first production I would see in the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre in the Simon Fraser University complex, newly built on the old Woodwards site. As it turned out it is still so new that I was directed by a security man to an entrance to the theatre complex through a gap in the construction fencing that still surrounds much of the area.

The second reason was that instead of driving my car I planned to take the Canada Line up to Waterfront and walk along West Hastings to the theatre, checking out a Salsa Studio on the way. I can just hear the groans of "what's the big deal, taking transit" but I was going by myself to this show, and for me, walking alone late at night in what is not as yet a very desirable part of the city, constitutes an adventure.

The Edward Curtis Project by Marie Clements
Directed by Marie Clements and Brenda Leadlay
Presentation House Theatre
Jan 21 to 31, 2010

Photograph Credits: Tim Matheson

Vancouver, BC:  "Obsession and appropriation." 

In a unique and rare conjunction, within a four day period, I saw two newly created theatrical works, dealing with similar themes but approached very differently - Beyond Eden and The Edward Curtis Project. After seeing The Edward Curtis Project, I stayed to hear the talk back session in which members of the cast succinctly summed up the common themes of these plays as "obsession and  appropriation".

Both plays are loosely based on real events surrounding two men, each driven by an obsession. Beyond Eden's Lewis Wilson is an anthropologist/ archeologist bound on preserving cultural history of the Haida by  retrieving and restoring decaying totem poles form a deserted Haida village.  Edward Curtis is a photographer who devotes his life to "documenting" what he calls "The Vanishing Indian." In both cases an argument can be made that as  "the other", i.e. non-Aboriginal, they are engaging in cultural appropriation by "stealing"  Aboriginal  art or icons. And in the case of Curtis, possibly even portraying a self-manufactured cultural image as the real thing.

Beyond Eden by Bruce Ruddell
Music by Bruce Ruddell and Bill Henderson
Directed by Dennis Garnhum
Music Direction by Bill Henderson
Choreographer Jacques Lemay
Fight Director JeanPierre Fournier
Co-produced by Vancouver Playhouse and Theatre Calgary
Jan 16 to Feb 6 th, 2010

Photographs by David Cooper

Vancouver, BC:  Just imagine. You dream  an "impossible dream" for 25 years and finally one exhilarating night, your dream explodes into  reality in a visually and musically stunning production. Beyond Eden had  its world premiere last week on the Vancouver Playhouse stage as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and it is  a "tour de force".  Bruce Ruddell  and his creative collaborators, cast and crew can truly be proud of how his dream has been actualized.

Mrs. Dexter & Her Daily
By Joanna McClelland Glass
Directed by Marti Maraden
Co-production of the Arts Club Theatre Companys
and Canada's National Arts Centre
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
Jan 7 to Feb 17th,  2010

Vancouver, BC:   I loved this show. From the minute the "sunlight" of a new day began to brighten Pam Johnson's meticulously detailed set, the spacious kitchen and dining area of an obviously well-to-do family's home, I was drawn into the unfolding routine of daily life in the Dexter home. The design team, Johnson, Marsha Sibthorpe (lighting) and Philip Clarkson (Costumes) gave director Marti Maraden an attractively authentic environment which the characters created by Fiona Reid as Edith Dexter and Nicola Cavendish as Peggy Randall, the "daily", really seemed to inhabit.

The script has an interesting and unusual structure, essentially consisting of two monologues about the intersecting lives of the two characters, who never actually appear together on stage. The first act belongs to 65 year old Peggy Randall, a indomitably optimistic charlady, who has worked for the wealthy Dexter family for about 10 years. We learn the sad details of her early life, see her soldiering on with her work despite aching joints and dental problems, and dealing bravely with her fears of ending her days alone and poor in social housing. Peggy has been a fighter all her life. She tackles adversity headlong and makes lemonade out of the lemons that life throws at her. She is smart and she can do anything from fixing broken electric fans to hanging curtains. But she can't fix her employer's shattered life and her attempts to communicate with the as-yet-unseen Mrs. Dexter,leave us admiring Peggy's spirit while feeling most unfavorably disposed towards the seemingly spoiled, and self-pitying Mrs. D.

A Beautiful View
Written and directed by Daniel MacIvor
Ruby Slippers Theatre
Performance Works
Dec 4 to Dec 13, 2009
Also at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts
Dec 16 to 19.

Vancouver, BC:  Start with a script written by one of Canada's iconic playwright/actors and directed by the playwright himself. Feature two compelling powerful female actors with hugely synergistic on-stage chemistry in a small theatre setting where every nuance of  their performance can be seen. And focus on the ebb and flow of an intimate relationship between these two women, from casual meeting, to sexual encounter, touching on friendship, love, attraction, trust and mistrust. My expectations were high - I was expecting truly to be blown away by this play. But I confess I just did not get it.

Colleen Wheeler is "Linda" and Diane Brown is "Mitch". The telling of their story is framed by a camping trip where they have come together to talk about what happened at a Halloween party that disrupted their relationship that had developed over some twenty years.

For the first maybe five minutes there is silence. Wheeler connects with the audience with minute facial gestures, sideways looks, a twitch of the mouth. This opening night audience is theatre savvy - we know we are supposed to feel uncomfortable and restless so nobody moves a muscle. As the minutes pass, an occasional laugh or a nervous giggle is heard from different seats.